1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data management apparatus and method for managing data represented by title information, a recording medium recording a data management program, and a camera.
2. Description of the Related Art
Upon managing data, data name, content summary, address, attribute, etc. may be used as title information to identify target data. For example, if the data is music data, the title of the music can be used as the title information. If the data is photo or image data, the thumbnail image can be used as the title information. If the data is web data, the URL (address) can be used as the title information. However, any other kind of correspondence between data category and title information is possible and is not limited to the above-mentioned correspondences. The title information can also be called label information or index information.
In a data management apparatus for displaying title information to manage or retrieve data the content of which is represented by this title information, some contrivance is required to display the data as the number of target data increases.
For example, if data is image data, its thumbnail image is often used and displayed as the title information to manage the data. The use of the thumbnail image as the title information makes it easy to check the data content as an image, compared to the case of use of a file name represented merely by a string of characters as the title information. The thumbnail image is widely used not only to search for the image, but also to check the image in various processing.
There are many proposals related to such a thumbnail image. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-255740 teaches a technique for displaying, as a list of thumbnail images, groups of images shot on the same shooting date, a technique for displaying, as a list of thumbnail images, a group of images instructed to be printed, and the like.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-157825 teaches a technique for dividing a screen into a plurality of areas in such a manner that thumbnails of shot images are displayed in one area and a print candidate image is displayed in a larger size than the thumbnails of the shot images in any other area in parallel to the area for the thumbnails of the shot images. This technique makes it easy to select an image as a print target from among a great number of images.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-151115 discloses an imaging apparatus, which lists thumbnail images and displays small-size print icon and erase icon at the bottom of the list so that a user can specify a thumbnail image of the image the user wants to process and an icon indicating a processing content for the image in order to perform the specified processing on the specified image.
As mentioned above, there are various proposals for user interfaces using the thumbnail image upon selecting an image and a processing content for the selected image.